John Calvin Commentary Hosea 4:11

"Whoredom and wine and new wine take away the understanding." — Hosea 4:11 (ASV)

The verb לקח lakech, means "to take away." The interpretation that wine and wantonness take possession of the heart is also admissible, but I prefer its simpler meaning: "to take away." However, this is not a general truth, as most imagine who regard it as a proverbial saying, that wantonness and wine deprive people of their right mind and understanding. On the contrary, it is to be restricted, I have no doubt, to the Israelites. It is as though the Prophet had said that they were without a right mind and like brute animals, because drunkenness and fornication had infatuated or fascinated them.

We may also take both in a metaphorical sense, as fornication may signify superstition, and drunkenness likewise. Yet it seems more suitable to the context to consider that the Prophet here reproaches the Israelites for having petulantly cast aside all instruction by being too much given to their pleasures and too much cloyed. Since then the Israelites had been enriched with great plenty, and God had yielded ground to abominable indulgences, the Prophet says that they were without sense; and this is commonly the case with such people. I will not, therefore, discuss drunkenness and fornication here in more detail.

It is indeed true that when anyone becomes addicted to wantonness, he loses both modesty and a right mind. It is also true that wine is, so to speak, poisonous, for it is, as one has said, a mixed poison; and the earth, when it sees its own blood drunk up intemperately, takes its revenge on people. These things are true; but let us see what the Prophet meant.

Now, as I have said, he simply directs his discourse to the Israelites and says that they were sottish and senseless because the Lord had dealt too liberally with them. For, as I have said, the kingdom of Israel was then very opulent and full of all kinds of luxury.

The Prophet then clearly addresses this very thing: “How is it that you are now so senseless that there is not a particle of right understanding among you? It is because you are given to excesses, because there is among you too large an abundance of all good things. Hence, all indulge their own lusts, and these take away your heart.” In short, God means here that the Israelites abused His blessings and that excesses blinded them. This is the meaning. Let us now go on—